Crossroads
A Memoir in Baseball and Life
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- 9,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Legendary baseball player and manager Dusty Baker reflects on his extraordinary career—filled with invaluable lessons on perseverance, leadership, and living life meaningfully on the field and off—in this “deeply meditative journey into baseball and cultural history” (The Athletic).
“The story of a uniquely American life [from] one of the most beloved people in all of sports.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Dusty Baker walked with baseball legends and became one himself. After he signed with the Braves in 1968 at the age of nineteen against his father’s wishes, no less than the great Hank Aaron promised to take Baker under his wing. Mentored by Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie Mays, Baker became a premier hitter, helping take the Dodgers to a World Series victory in 1981. He would bookend this with another championship in 2022, this time as a manager helping guide and redeem a Houston Astros team humbled by a cheating scandal. Respected by generations across the game, Baker has come to embody the spirit of the sport—and yet, to discuss his baseball career is only to scratch the surface of a remarkable life.
Crossroads will bring readers into the mind of one of baseball’s mavericks: a curious, inquisitive thinker whose deep interest in the worlds of music, wine, and the simpler joys of life charts a journey of success, struggle, faith, and perseverance. Baker's memoir is filled with hard-earned wisdom and a love for life so plentiful, it seems to radiate from every sentence.
A true American original, counting among his friends presidents and dignitaries, bluesmen and artists, Baker weaves a spell of life at the crossroads, where fate turns on our decisions and the unexpected answers that sometimes seek us out when we least expect it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Legendary MLB outfielder and manager Baker (Kiss the Sky) regales readers with his love of the game in this endearing but overlong memoir. Raised in Riverside, Calif., Baker recalls a 1950s childhood spent hunting, fishing, and playing yard sports with his siblings. When he enters adolescence, the memoir hops from one major achievement to the next: Baker is drafted by the Atlanta Braves as a teenager, wins the 1981 World Series with the Dodgers, manages Barry Bond and the Giants, and leads the Houston Astros to a World Series victory in 2022. Along the way, he dispenses lessons he's learned from fellow players including teammate Hank Aaron, who taught him to trust his feelings and keep his mind sharp. Similar sports memoir clichés abound, but Baker rescues the proceedings somewhat with expert analysis of other managers' styles. In generous and revealing passages, for example, he praises the shrewdness and intelligence of former players turned managers Frank Robinson and Joe Torre. Eventually, however, the account's excessive detail and repetitive structure start to wear thin. This is sure to please diehard Baker fans, but more casual readers are likely to leave before the seventh-inning stretch.
